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Electrophysiological evidence for the understanding of maternal speech by 9-month-old infants
Title / Series / Name
Psychological Science
Publication Volume
23
Publication Issue
7
Pages
Authors
Editors
Keywords
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14018/9713
Abstract
Early word learning in infants relies on statistical, prosodic, and social cues that support speech segmentation and the attachment of meaning to words. It is debated whether such early word knowledge represents mere associations between sound patterns and visual object features, or reflects referential understanding of words. By using event-related brain potentials, we demonstrate that 9-month-old infants detect the mismatch between an object appearing from behind an occluder and a preceding label with which their mother introduces it. The N400 effect has been shown to reflect semantic priming in adults, and its absence in infants has been interpreted as a sign of associative word learning. By setting up a live communicative situation for referring to objects, we demonstrate that a similar priming effect also occurs in young infants. This finding may indicate that word meaning is referential from the outset, and it drives, rather than results from, vocabulary acquisition in humans.
Topic
Publisher
Place of Publication
London
Type
Journal article
Date
2012
Language
ISBN
Identifiers
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797612438734